The present invention relates to a direct disc drive for a computer.
By way of background, in a computer disc drive, a shaft is mounted in a housing by a pair of spaced bearings, one of which is fixed and the other of which is permitted to float axially to allow for thermal variations. In order to permit such floating movement, a clearance is provided between the outer race of the floating bearing and the housing to permit it to move axially. However, this type of mounting also permits the shaft to move radially in the area of the floating bearing which often results in the inability of the read-write head of the computer to find the data in the same radial position and which often results in a loss of data or data becoming hard to read.
The foregoing problem was experienced in direct drive assemblies wherein a direct drive motor was mounted between the housing and shaft. This problem did not exist in older disc drives wherein a motor was offset from the shaft and drove the shaft through a belt and pulley arrangement which produced a side load on the shaft and thus removed the radial free play.